Tag: diversity

Every month, we ask one individual in our network a few questions about their way into tech, their motivation and their lessons learned.

This month role model is Bettina Rotzetter. She has been working in IT for twenty years mostly in the health sector, currently as an IT Compliance expert. Besides, she has recently started a new adventure as founder of a tech-startup.

Let’s start from the beginning. Tell us a bit about you: Where are you from? What do you do? What are your current projects?

I’m Canadian, grew up in the great white north. I came to Switzerland in my mid-twenties for 3 months to escape the brutal cold winter months. I decided to come to Bern to discover some swiss roots.

When I first came, I started out working in a factory. Shortly after I got a job in a Swiss bank in IT and from there l moved into the health sector. I spent most of my career inside hospitals troubleshooting anything and everything related to IT in medicine and research. Ten years ago, I moved into the University Hospital environment which I really enjoy a lot due to the international flair. The fast pace environment is super interesting and projects are challenging. But you encounter a lot of really amazing people dedicated to making a difference in people’s lives. I am currently in a small developer team in eye research. I also founded a small start-up with four friends this year.

What valuable advice did you get from your parents?

I was very fortunate to have been influenced by many different folks from all walks of life. I feel this is one of the greatest life teachings one could possibly get, which no one family or school could ever teach. I think this really influenced me to become a notorious optimist. There is always a bright side and it’s a matter of finding a sweet spot to help you grow and nourish your own curiosity to develop further. I think in the end you need to create yourself to be your own role model before you can be it for anyone else.

How did you become interested in tech?

I started my tech journey at a very young age. I grew up with a lot of guys around me so I was used to the male dominant environments. I got my hands down right dirty from start in the gaming scene. Also in the music scenes technology dominated early on in my life. We used to hack any equipment together, which we could get our hands on.

When I was about 15 years old, I met this amazing Canadian French woman from Quebec. She moved into my neighbourhood. Through her, I realized how important role models are. She gave me the foundation I stand on today in my tech job. Even though you may go unnoticed when you stand at the end of a line, you can learn a lot back there if you’re a really smart kid and you pay attention. I watched her one day in a public space hack around on a command line and my curiosity for tech was ignited like a sparking light. She taught me all my tech basics late nights hacking around in her setup garage which was this huge playground full of computers. We installed them, got them setup and loaded them up on a 4×4 truck. She then drove from town to town in northern rural areas in all weather conditions and taught unemployed people computer skills. This woman became the biggest role model I looked up to my entire life. Little did I know back then that the day would come where I would earn my own living from what she taught me.

What aspects of your work are you proudest of?

Sometimes you work on projects that are just meaningless but they are just part of business life, too. Other times you get that lucky draw in a project, which might make a difference in someone’s life. I think the meaningful projects I got to be part of was when I took someone’s kid periodically to spend a few days in my IT team and showed them what we do. I liked to pass that on to kids to see if a spark could be ignited in them or help them gain a perspective for their future.

Apart from those tech-projects, I got to be part of a music project, which I was asked to do for a young teenager who was terminally ill. This production was part of her final phase of her life. I produced a song that described her short life in the studio together with some of my friends. We hacked around with tracks and made some little video idea with very minimalistic equipment but it did the job. Even though we had no budget we made the most of the tech equipment we owned. This project reminded me to always stay humble.

What drives you at work?

I think my biggest motivation is always to find a new perspective to maybe make a difference and to hit that sweet spot to grow into it.

What has been the toughest challenge you’ve learnt while working in the tech scene?

I faced many challenges throughout the years but I think it’s been really challenging always being the only woman in every team. I only realized later on in my life that diverse views are only possible, if diversity is actually present in teams and these perspectives are so valuable in all forms to broaden our own horizons and grow. I also think it was difficult to outgrow my own boundaries at times in the tech field as a woman. I found myself constantly recreating myself in the field, which retrospectively was probably one of the most positive developments I had in the job, even if it was the most challenging.

What advice would you give other women in tech?

I would like to promote and advise any woman to take a path in a tech career if that lights your internal fires. Just do it! Believe in yourself and don’t feel intimidated. I would like to really promote that women who do make it to the top in tech or in any field for that matter, to help and empower other women. What I also mean with that: Teach your girls right from start at an early age they can take a rocket to the moon if that’s what they fancy. Encourage your children to follow-up on impossible visions and dreams because that’s what we need more of in our business world. Do not see things as a failure if they don’t turn out. It’s just your version 0.1 beta and you can always refactor your code.

Every month we ask one individual in our network a few questions about their way into tech, their motivation and their lessons learned.

What valuable advice did you get from your parents?

I think it isn’t one single advice I got from my parents. It’s the attitude of trust and self-confidence they lived and demonstrated every day to us kids. And they gave us love and showed us how to be respectful and kind. If you are fitted with a basic trust then almost everything is possible!

What aspects of work are you proudest of?

In 2015 I started to think about founding my own company. At that time it was all around visualisation and I offered workshops and courses about this subject. I knew that this wasn’t enough and I was interested in humans and their roles in different systems they are living in. So I started a CAS in Coaching and soon recognised, that those two subjects (which are both big passions of mine) can be well connected.

So I think I’m proud of myself that I had the courage to figure out what really matters to me and the intention to follow my goals and dreams. Today I have my own company www.kimia.ch and I am able to do what I love.

What drives you at work?

I think it is my curiosity and the natural interest in people and stories. And the fact that I want to get out the best of every situation, for my clients and their needs.

What has been the toughest challenge you faced while working?

I think it is the fact that you have to get out of your comfort zone again and again and again. Every new job is a challenge. New people, new needs, new settings. With a good backpack of skills, experiences and methods and with enough self-confidence you are able to face these challenges without breaking down.

What advice would you give other women?

You should be able to get out of your comfort zone every now and then and move further on in the learning zone – every single day.

Running 15 minutes late, I am sitting on my bike in heels, trying to beat the rain while wondering which would create the bigger blow to my confidence – arriving wet and late (due to the rain) or sweaty and slightly less late (due to a good workout). I end up deciding to choose the middle way, a little less speed, half sweaty, half wet from the rain and arrive 15 minutes later at Ginetta’s to Crack the Confidence Gap with We Shape Tech.

The event is filled to the brim, 79 eager participants show up to find out more about confidence. The crowd arrives prepared – participants have gone through a short survey that helps them identify which areas of confidence needs the most improvement. Not to my surprise and to my own annoyance I score worst in the category of self-branding and marketing. I decide to politely ignore the result and later join another working group to save my brain from getting stuck in another rant on why I refuse to consider myself a product I need to market and build building confidence in another area of my life.

The evening starts with a short deep into what confidence is. Simone Reichlin User Researcher at Ginetta takes the stage to demystify confidence and shares the fundamentals from a psychological perspective. Confidence is defined as the trust in ones abilities, qualities and judgment and serves as our basis to act and deal effectively with life’s challenges. Research shows that confidence is learned rather than a trait we are born with. Both socialization and attachment style influence the confidence we build early on and later on support or hinder the further development of confidence throughout our lives. Other factors influencing self-confidence are gender, age and nationality with women consistently scoring lower when self-confidence between genders are compared. “While we think we live in an equal world, the gender gap clearly shows that reality still is different.” To tackle the challenge Simone suggests to pair building awareness on where and why the gap occurs with talking about it and building the tools to bridge the confidence gap. The evening’s program is designed to help us put those three steps into practice.

I decide to join a working group that takes a closer look on how to build confidence in response to typical situations that occur in the workplace every day. The discussion in my group is lively and brings up experiences that we read and hear about frequently. There is the tech consultant who has to prove her role again and again as a project lead, even so she has 10 years of experience in the field. The sales representative who casually gets asked by her manager whether she knows if she wants to have a family or build her career. And the co-worker who doesn’t know what to do with her tears in the workplace that sometimes build up when she is extremely frustrated or angry. Many of us noticing that the blow towards our confidence feels worse when we feel we reacted in an inappropriate way during or after the situation.

While coming up with solutions we also start asking ourselves who has been setting the norms and rules for what we accept as professional behavior. Why do we feel pressured to come up with a response right away? Why does it seem like a no go to tear up or cry at work? And will these norms change with more and more women taking the lead in the workspace?

Some of the solutions we build in the group are simple, but have proven effective like taking the time to follow up when we want to communicate more even after a conversation has ended, asking for feedback more often, taking the time to download with an ally before confronting the person concerned in a conflict or misunderstanding.

Appreciating the diversity of possibilities presented on building and demonstrating more confident behaviour, to me the larger question on how environments and structures need to be shaped to enable women to live, express and practice confidence remains unaddressed. Lately, I am feeling a growing level of unease when women address how they can adjust their behavior to come across more confident. I am wondering if we once more just try to accommodate ways of operating that already don’t support the majority of women, rather than addressing the root cause.

On my way home, my head is spinning with questions and new ideas. Climbing up the small hill towards my apartment on my bike, I conclude that for me confidence continues to grow in spaces that allow me to actively engage, in which people are interested in my thoughts and opinions, in which I can contribute to shaping the flow of communication and there is a willingness to continuously work through differences.

Last Wednesday We Shape Tech hosted a work-shop style event aimed at cracking the Confidence Gap. Over 79 participants joined together to tackle the challenging topic, exchange life hacks and learn new strategies to boost their self-confidence.

The event kicked off with a delicious welcome apéro hosted by Ginetta and a brief introduction of what the Confidence Gap is by Janine Fuchs and Marike Carstens of the WST team. Ginetta researcher, Simone Reichlin, dug deeper into the topic by explaining attachment theory – how self-confidence develops in childhood. As children mature, data reveals that a gap in confidence between boys and girls becomes evident, one that often carries on into adulthood.

According to research presented in The Confidence Code, “men overestimate their abilities and performance, and women underestimate both, [but] their performances do not differ in quality.” A lack of self-confidence is often why women do not speak up in meetings, feel unworthy of positions they are qualified for and overestimate risks while underestimating rewards. Read more about the Confidence Gap between men and women here.

In preparation for the work-shop part of the event, participants were asked to complete the Nice Girls Self-Assessment found in the best-selling book Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, by executive coach, Lois P. Frankel. The assessment identifies seven areas where low self-confidence can affect how we behave in our professional lives, for example, how we play the game, how we act and how we think. Participants joined one of the discussion groups based on their self-assessment.

Each group was given the task of identifying how low-self esteem can shape one’s behavior at work – how does low-self esteem affect the way we think? Conversations were buzzing with personal examples of dilemmas group members had faced. One participant, for instance, shared that customers often challenge her expertise, and she fears that when she responds assertively she appears rude.

Groups were then asked to brainstorm life hacks to help overcome these types of obstacles. As the workshop ended, a spokesperson from each group took the floor to share their group’s findings and the life hacks they had assembled.

How You Brand Yourself

If you are looking for a job make a video of yourself as it will distinguish you from other candidates

Be proud of who you are and do not be afraid to take credit for your work

How You Play the Game

Discover the unwritten rules of the company by talking to as many co-workers as possible

Remember you are not a victim of the game, you are an equal player

How You Think

Do not be afraid to communicate your misgivings about a project or a deadline to your boss

Trust your gut and expertise

How You Respond

Place yourself purposely in situations that stretch your boundaries to practice meaningful responses

If you think of something you should have communicated, follow-up with an email

How You Sound

Take pauses while speaking to allow others time to reflect

Think of conversations as mini-speeches to help structure your communication

Undoubtedly, the battle of boosting self-confidence is shared by many, but possible to overcome especially when we join together. Stay posted for our next activities andSave the Date on October 18 for our Master21 & WST Codeweek Event at EWZ Selnau. Looking forward to seeing you there!